


The Ladybug Effect

by beautifulterriblequeen



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Gen, Holmes Brothers, nitty picky geniuses
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-25
Updated: 2019-01-25
Packaged: 2019-10-16 03:36:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,427
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17541932
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beautifulterriblequeen/pseuds/beautifulterriblequeen
Summary: Sherlock is telling Mycroft a story.





	The Ladybug Effect

The Ladybug Effect

 

Sherlock tapped his fingers in insistent patterns on the arms of his chair. “And when John left this morning, I noticed one impossible detail. One tiny thing out of place. What do you suppose it was?”

Standing in the middle of his brother’s small and rather chaotic London flat, Mycroft Holmes wore an air of uncomfortable privilege and twitched his hand toward the small bottle of hand sanitizer he’d taken to carrying in the right pocket of his suit. “I’m sure I have no idea, brother mine. But I’m very much afraid that you, in your inimitable role as drama queen, are about to enlighten me, whether I consent or no.”

The tiniest corner of Sherlock’s mouth twitched, though his eyes remained impassively locked on his prissy brother’s face. He decided, rather pettily, to make Mycroft wait for the story he’d just acknowledged he’d be hearing. Sherlock picked up his cup of tea—which he’d recently learned had not, in fact, appeared daily by happy chance but was prepared every morning by his landlady, Mrs. Hudson—and took a nice, slow sip with lots of air, all while maintaining eye contact with Mycroft.

Mycroft let a fleeting, saccharine smile cross his lips.

Sherlock accepted Mycroft’s consent with a longer flash of a smile and continued. “I’m never sure about these things, Mycroft, but considering that the temperature this morning was a cool two degrees below zero, despite the fact that it has been considerably warmer for several days, and judging by the fact that you wore your thickest gloves this morning and dug that frankly ghastly thick scarf with the Big Bens all over it from the back of your closet, and also considering the longer lines of shivering people waiting to get into the ridiculously overpriced coffee shop around the corner, and the pandemic-inducing amount of visible breath they’re all expelling every time they open their mouths to utter an inane statement such as ‘Bugger me, it’s cold out this morning,’ I am relatively confident in deducing that it is, in fact, the season commonly referred to as winter.”

Mycroft pulled his pocket watch from its home in his vest and ostentatiously checked the time. “Is this story going to be much longer? I have an appointment at Buckingham Palace before noon.”

Sherlock launched himself from his chair and strode past Mycroft to the near window. He pulled the curtain back with his long fingers in a practiced motion that exposed exactly as much of humanity as he was willing to tolerate, while obscuring himself from view as much as possible.

Below, the sidewalk teemed with chilly humans, bumbling about their daily business, leaving long vapor trails behind them as they breathed their way past his front stoop. A brief wrinkle of distaste rippled across his nose before he distracted himself with his story. He spun to face Mycroft with a confident smile. “You know I have little enough interest in the living—they all just sort of—” He waved his fingers in a vaguely panicked flutter, “—carry on or something.” He turned and pointed out the window. “But not in winter.”

A delicate chuckle escaped Mycroft’s lipless mouth. “I’m sorry, dear brother, but it sounds to me like you’re confusing people with, oh, I don’t know, bees.”

A long, narrow finger raised in protest. “You’re slipping, Mycroft. First, I never said ‘humans,’ just ‘the living.’ And second, I did in fact mean insects in particular. But, I confess, I do find a small modicum of affinity between the two. Humans and bees.”

Mycroft made an expression of disapproval. “Myes, indeed.” He locked eyes with Sherlock, and together they said,

“The _noise_.”

Sherlock vaulted back into his chair, planting his feet on the seat, and contained the story’s next section within the frame of his hands. “There, on John’s coat collar, I saw it. The color caught my eye as he was leaving the kitchen. I confess, it didn’t register for approximately zero-point-three seconds, and by then, he’d stepped into the stairwell. I lost another several seconds debating with myself—”

“So difficult to admit to a friend when you made a critical error, isn’t it?” Mycroft’s smile was cavalier, and his eyes were friendly daggers.

John had been in to ask if Sherlock had seen Rosie’s little stuffed horse. Sherlock had not only noticed the horse immediately upon coming home last night, but he had picked it up, dusted it off, and set it by the coffee, which he knew John would make a beeline— _ha_ —for upon entry. Sherlock had positioned himself in his chair so that he could have a full view of the kitchen as John entered it via the side door, began asking inevitably after Rosie’s horse, reached for the coffee, and found himself holding a mug full of floppy, pink-polka-dotted stuffed animal.

Sherlock smiled broadly at the memory of John’s momentary pause, his quiet, “Of course you saw it, what was I thinking?” and his more vocal, “Thanks, mate. Knew I kept you around for a reason.” They’d shared a laugh. Sherlock had reveled in the comfort and normalcy of their interaction. He knew John on more levels than he knew himself. And John, in his own way, knew Sherlock. It continually surprised Sherlock how much that meant to him, and he had to resolve, yet again, not to make a fool of himself by mentioning it out loud. And then that bright spot of color had caught his eye.

Sherlock squinted at Mycroft, leaped again from his chair, and strode toward the kitchen. “It’s not difficult at all to admit when I’m wrong. Not to my friend John Watson. But then, how would you know about such a difficulty? That would entail _having_ _friends_.”

Mycroft’s level of impatience reached a predetermined internal marker, and his façade broke. “Oh, for pity’s sake, don’t start that again, Sherlock. You know I’m perfectly content—”

Sherlock froze mid-stride, halfway to the kitchen. His blue eyes pierced his brother, cataloguing every detail. Mycroft froze as well, unaccustomed to admitting he had emotions any more than his brother did.

“Is it some sort of holiday today, I can never remember,” Sherlock finally said.

“I don’t believe so, no.”

Sherlock’s brows dropped, seeking a truth he couldn’t immediately spot in his brother’s actions. “Then why the filial generosity?”

“Generosity?”

“You just said you’re perfectly content with just me in your life.”

“I said nothing of the kind.”

“You were _going_ to say it. You were in the _middle_ of saying it. Content? I make you feel _content_?” Sherlock’s eyes searched the room with active concern, hoping a clue had climbed up his bookshelves and would reveal all. Emotions were always so messy, like John’s room and the kitchen table. If only they came with a filing system.

Mycroft’s hand twitched again, and his lip curled in surprised alarm. “Dear lord, is it possible that you and your common habits are actually _rubbing off_ on me?”

Sherlock’s gaze dropped to Mycroft’s pocket. “I’d tell you to apply that hand sanitizer you keep wanting to use, but I’m afraid it’s not rated for emotional spillage.”

Mycroft actually slipped his hand inside his pocket and held the little bottle like a protective talisman. “Er, please, do go on with your story. The spot of color?”

With an exaggerated sigh of longsuffering, Sherlock abandoned the emotionally charged exchange and turned, as if being rotated on a spit, toward the kitchen once again. “Yes, very well. The coffee, the horse, the little spot of red, and out the door it went, riding John’s collar. I caught him at the front door downstairs.”

 

_“John, wait!” Sherlock had always hated the thread of begging in his own voice when he had to call after John and admit he had missed something. So he decided, as usual, not to do that last part._

_John turned back toward Sherlock as he stood on the stoop. “Yeah, what is it?”_

_Sherlock seized John by the coat and gave him a little tug, pulling him close. “I just wanted you to know that I…”_

_John observed Sherlock’s hands, curled in his lapels, with confusion. “You, you what? Sherlock?”_

_Sherlock studied his hands as well. “You mean a lot to me, Dr. Watson. A surprisingly enormous amount, really. I didn’t want you, er, not to know.”_

_John chuckled and gently shook his head. “I do know, you big idiot. You don’t have to accost me on the street to tell me that.”_

_Sherlock lifted his hands, then gently smoothed John’s lapels. Slow, delicate smoothing motions. Incredibly gentle. “Right. Sorry.”_

_John studied his friend’s hands again. “All right, what is this? Are you thinking of getting a cat?”_

_Sherlock blinked. “What?”_

_“You’re literally petting me, Sherlock.”_

_Sherlock soothed his hand across John’s lapel one final time. “No, I’m not.”_

_“Yes, you are, now what is going on? You’re up to something. Is it you behind all those dating rumors?”_

_Sherlock squinted a bit, twitched his head to the side in uncertainty. “Isn’t it polite to touch people you like? I thought that was one of those… things… that you do when you’re friends.”_

_“No. Not like that, stop it. You’re doing something, I can tell. Don’t know what it is, but you’re definitely up to something.”_

_Mildly alarmed that he was becoming predictable, Sherlock studied John’s face, found no lie there, and demanded, “How can you tell?”_

_John shifted his feet and stared up at Sherlock with a patient look. “You’re smiling.”_

_Sherlock let his smile spread across his cheeks. “Have a good day, John.” He whirled and returned inside 221B._

_John’s parting mutter floated back to him on the breeze, barely squeezing inside the door before Sherlock tugged it shut against the bitter cold. “Bloody cock.”_

 

With a dramatic flourish and a triumphant smile, Sherlock held up his retrieved prize for Mycroft to see.

A tiny red insect, fat and round with pairs of black spots along its carapace, crawled along the top of Sherlock’s finger.

Mycroft was pulled into a momentary flashback of his early childhood: his little brother proudly showing him a big shiny beetle. The sun glistened off its gleaming carapace. It was nearly the size of Sherlock’s tiny palm. And then he’d held up another beetle. A gift for his big brother.

Mycroft blinked the fond memory away. “A _ladybug_. You’ve detained me from the palace for a story about a ladybug? Is it a _magical_ ladybug that can transport me to the queen if I make a wish?” he asked with a sharp smile.

Sherlock’s shoulders drooped. “Do save your sarcasm for people it can actually have an effect on, Mycroft.” He returned his gaze to the tiny creature making its way along his index finger. “As ever, you see but you do not understand.”

The jab gave Mycroft a moment of disquiet. He vastly preferred the largest possible viewpoint on any given issue, since he was more capable of retaining disparate information and finding connections than most, and certainly more than Sherlock was. But he did rely on Sherlock for the small things, such as unlocking Irene Adler’s phone and dealing with Moriarty. And the ladybug currently meandering to the end of his brother’s finger was very much a small thing.

“I’m afraid that, when things are so small as to fall beneath my notice,” Mycroft began, “I rather lose sense of scale. Do enlighten me as to the significance of this miniscule creature?” he invited.

Sherlock promptly complied, pointing toward the kitchen. “I found her on John’s coat. Though I first noticed her on his sleeve in the kitchen, by the time I’d caught up with him outside, she’d climbed onto his lapel and was approaching his shoulder.” He gingerly stepped to a side table near the door and let the ladybug ease her way onto a single flower lying there. Without missing a beat, he continued, “I had no time to waste if I was to effect a successful rescue. Her location upon my first sighting couldn’t have been her original landing spot, so I used the distance she covered in the time it took John to get downstairs in order to backtrack her movement and locate her landing zone: the outside of John’s right pocket.”

“You keep saying ‘her.’ You are aware that the term ‘ladybug’ encompasses both male and female insects?” Mycroft kept his tone mild. Sherlock had a frightful lack of knowledge when it came to some of life’s more obvious details, such as the declination of the ecliptic.

“Yes, obviously. But this one is definitely a lady, er, bug.” Sherlock took a breath and rattled on. “Insects are, as you know, cold-blooded. The temperature, as I mentioned earlier, was a solid two below zero this morning, and yet this ladybug traveled a distance of twenty-one inches in just a short time, indicating that she couldn’t have ridden into 221B on John’s coat. No, Mycroft,” Sherlock proclaimed, jabbing a finger toward the little red bug, “she was _already in the building_.”

Mycroft tsked at Sherlock’s intense blue stare. “Don’t give me that look, Sherlock. I have no idea what that means.”

“Very well.” Sherlock spun into the kitchen, pointing. “John entered that door and strode across to here, where we keep the coffee.” He pointed again. “A distance of no less than two point six meters, given that he had to walk around the table the long way because he was distracted by my location and immediately asked me the question he’d come here to ask: had I seen Rosie’s horse.”

“Yes.” Mycroft’s tone indicated that Sherlock should continue, as he was keeping up with his little brother’s logic just fine, thank you.

“But the ladybug didn’t encounter John in the kitchen. Not enough time to reach his lapel by the time he left the flat. Ladybugs are fast but they’re not that fast, not unless they fly, and even then—But if she’d flown, she wouldn’t have landed back on John. He was just transport.”

“Transport to where?” Mycroft tried to hide a wriggle of exasperated curiosity. His little brother did love an audience to prattle on to.

“Exactly!” Sherlock spun and pointed at him, drawing him into the chase. “To where? And why? Why now?”

Mycroft held out his hands, desperate for context. “What does it matter? Does the ladybug also have a pressing engagement with the queen?”

Sherlock froze, chest heaving, face aglow, arms spread. His smile was incandescent. “No, Mycroft. You wondered a minute ago whether my new friend is, in fact, a female ladybug. She has to be. She doesn’t have an _appointment_ with the queen. She _is_ the queen.”

Mycroft glanced over at the red bug happily traversing the long flower stem on the side table. “I am not bowing to that thing. I only bow to Her Majesty, because, well...”

“You’ll lose your head if you don’t, I know. But don’t you _see_ , Mycroft? Don’t you get it?”

Mycroft’s sigh would have made the saints proud.

Sherlock threw his hands wide and proclaimed with a broad grin, “Winter!”

Mycroft blinked passively.

Sherlock made a face. “Grr, you’re infuriating. John is so much better at reading my social cues and playing along.”

Mycroft tipped his head. “Yes, well, that is his primary function, is it not?”

Not appreciative of digs at his best friend, Sherlock replied, “Well, then, since you’re such a moron that you didn’t even know you were supposed to ask, I’ll educate you, dear brother.” Sherlock swooped an arm to point at the ladybug. “The queen hibernates over the winter and lays her eggs in the spring. What you see before you, Mycroft, is the future of the species. If she dies—if she had ridden outside with John, into the bitter cold—”

“Oh, God, please tell me you haven’t gone all Greenpeace on me. Mummy simply will not understand.”

“She’ll understand just fine. It’s you who doesn’t see the big picture, Mycroft.”

Mycroft blinked. “That remark was uncalled for.”

Sherlock ignored his brother’s discomfiture, kept staring into his eyes. “No, it wasn’t. Think.”

“About ladybugs freezing in the cold? Are we living in a modern adaptation of a Dickensian cautionary tale? That’s it, I’m leaving. Before the orphans begin to jostle each other in the hall for prime begging locations.” Mycroft turned toward the door.

Sherlock stepped up beside him and picked up the ladybug-laden flower. “Indeed. I’ll show you out.” His smile made Mycroft unnerved, and just a little proud.

Mycroft felt ever so slightly herded as they began to descend the stairs. Sherlock brought his tale to a close. “Judging by the speed of the ladybug and her primary location, I knew she had traveled across John’s coat for a short while. Too long to have climbed aboard on the first floor. Too short to have ridden in with him.” They reached the main floor. Sherlock held the flower out toward a matching bouquet that Mrs. Hudson had set on a side pedestal to brighten the place up.

Mycroft had dismissed the flowers’ existence from his mind the second he set eyes on them, but now the ladybug’s saga became clear to him. As he pulled his thick gloves from his coat pocket, he said, “Hibernating in 221B Baker Street for the winter, she sensed the warmth of the last several days and woke to lay her eggs. She found these flowers to launch from, but instead got swiped onto Dr. Watson’s coat—you saw the flowers when you chased Dr. Watson downstairs and deduced that they were the insect’s origin. If he’d stayed longer, or taken off his coat, she would have remained safely indoors. But instead, she was swept out into a deadly chill that would have meant the end of her and all her offspring. This is all very heroic of you, Sherlock. But I’m left to ponder why. Why does the ladybug _matter_?”

“Once again, Mycroft, you see, but you do not understand.” Sherlock tipped his curls toward the flowers.

Mycroft squinted at the clear glass vase. Old, treasured, lined with water marks from decades of use. Tiny vegetation fragments around the various waterlines, and on the table behind the vase itself, indicated species that did not match the white flowers in the vase at the moment. “So your landlady is a lifelong aficionado of a delightful variety of flowers. What of it?”

Sherlock leaned close. “ _Winter_ , Mycroft.”

Put-upon by Sherlock’s insistence, Mycroft sighed and reluctantly applied himself to the insignificant little problem. “If I end up forgetting even the tiniest detail about the French cultural incursions into Malaysia during my rather critical meeting today, Sherlock, I’ll have you— _oh_.” He turned in the hall and faced Mrs. Hudson’s front door. “Yes, of course. Well, that’s… perfectly sensible, I suppose, considering.”

“My conclusion as well. I’m glad you agree. Now, off you pop.” Sherlock held the flower up to eye level and met his brother’s eyes past the bright red ladybug on its stem. “You shouldn’t keep the _other_ queen waiting.”

Mycroft shot him an exasperated look. “I hope you enjoy yourself, brother mine. I’ll never understand your fascination with the little things.” Mycroft strode down the hallway.

Sherlock lifted his chin and smiled at his brother’s retreating back. “That’s all right, Mycroft. The little things understand me just fine. One day, if we’re all very lucky, they might understand you, too.” 

He dropped his gaze to the ladybug ambling down the flower stem. “Don’t you? Now, let’s find you somewhere safe and warm to hatch your happy little brood.” He headed upstairs at a slow, steady pace so as not to jostle his royalty from her throne. “Come spring—which I’m relatively confident is the next season coming up—you’ll have plenty of flowers in Mrs. Hudson’s back garden to tend to.” He lowered his voice and whispered to the bug, “I’ve learned that keeping one’s landlady in good spirits is a simple move that generates _endless_ goodwill. Don’t tell her I said that. You’re on my side.”

He reached his flat and set the flower in the window sill. The ladybug paused and turned toward the light. Sherlock smiled down at her. “Plenty of nasty little vermin to devour out there. An entire chaotic playground to dominate, control, and monitor. A paradise of disasters.”

Sherlock took a deep breath and gazed out his window at London. His playground.  His paradise. His responsibility. “Trust me. You’ll love it.”

 

 

 

 

 

..

**Author's Note:**

> This story is what happens when I let someone retrieve a ladybug from my car in the dead of winter and set it on a bush, and only on the way home do I realize the significance of its presence.
> 
> I'm a mass murderer. I've committed pre-emptive mass insecticide.
> 
> But hey, at least I solved the case. I did it. Take me away, 
> 
> My sincerest apologies.


End file.
